Stunned - I understand your point. I have lost any confidence in the people you are trying to
understand, and they literally refuse to look at things from another point of view.
So I know where they are and what they are doing.
I have met this before, holding a mirage faith, disjointed positions which in isolation appear
sensible, but when brought together fail. It is why over time more and more people are
pulling their position apart and seeing the glory of Christ as it really is, in victory and purity.
The thing about the cross, is when you see Jesus and the cross it changes you, everyday.
And it is here I rejoice, and I encourage everyone to dwell here and learn from our Lord,
listen to His words and walk in His ways. Only then will the Kingdom of God truly dwell
in your heart.
And that is all I have. I would say I follow the tradition of Bunyon and pilgrimes progress,
and the struggles of sanctification and motivation in the things of God.
But His sheep know of what I speak, and that will always be enough, Halleluyah, for the
Lamb is worthy of eternal glory and honour forever, Amen[/QUOTE/]
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I understand. I see it more like you do. I saw that a long time ago. I desire the practical help that old saints like Bunyan, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and all those old dusty guys have given me in my wrestlings with God.
But I think that you ALSO refuse to see it from their view. You admitted a few months ago, when we hunkered down in a thread with the promise that we would try again to understand what each other was meaning without name calling, that you had given up long ago and didn't take any conversation with them seriously. So we all decided that was the end of it because of course there was no need to continue then.
And to be perfectly honest, some small part of me was being selfish, because I myself did not understand many of the phrases they repeat so often and wanted very much to understand them because I sort of leaned toward your understanding at least a little more than theirs, yet I saw a slightly greater enabling on their part because they had better control over their tongues than you - even though the way they explained their walks was so vastly different from what I myself had experienced. (Although one man did get cranked up, but then he left for awhile because he saw that his flesh had risen up and that he had lost any control he had over his tongue, and because out of love for us he listened when we counseled him that he was not walking right in that stirred up state.)
You know, one of those dusty old saints I was speaking of a moment ago said that God leads us by two different ways, depending on which way suits us, because some are "actives" and some are "contemplatives." I thought at first that he was making excuses for people who didn't have a deep relationship with God, but as I read further, I believed he had truly seen this in monastery life and that both had a deep relationship with God but just couldn't understand one another and tried to force each other to walk the path God had taken THEM on. I truly think we do that even when we aren't in a monastery.
